2012 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 9

Here’s Sally’s prompt: Use the phrase “When he’s gone…” for your poem. The phrase can be in the title. It can be the opening line–or the closing line. It can show up somewhere in between. Just use it…somewhere.

Robert’s attempt at a When He’s Gone… Poem:

“Man in Rocking Chair”

When he’s gone, he don’t want nobody
to visit him who didn’t visit him
when he was here. In other words,
he don’t want a funeral service
for people to wail and moan and
check their watches. He sits alone
most nights, because he’s bitter
about everything. Suits him fine
enough. When he’s gone, he thinks,
there won’t be no one to miss him.

When he’s gone, she marks his absence by unfilled spaces,
his slot in the carport nothing but a spot of grease,
his chair sits cold, the indentations of his rump intact,
his pillow lies waiting, his water glass waits empty,
the silence throbs, and she thinks she hears the click
of toenails of a dog long buried in the back yard,
his ghost in the upstairs hall, pacing, wary. The moon
plays peeping tom, one eye on their window,
beams reaching across his side of the bed, lighting
her hand resting there, saving the place for him.

When she’s gone, he paces, rummages through the closet,
the dryer, stands and stares into the pantry, gives up,
calls and orders takeout. Every question justifies a call
just to check, to ask how to work the remote, the timer
on the oven, where she put the number he gave her to file.
He rearranges the chairs, stacks and unstacks the books
she keeps beside the bed, flipping through, reading
the last pages of a couple. When she gone, he forgets
to check the mail, leaves the papers piling up in the drive.
He waters her flowers just before she’s due back home.

When they’re home, they sometimes sit for hours, quiet,
comfortably aware of the other’s presence, within reach.
The silence is benevolent, asking for nothing from either
but cozy companionship as they move through their days,
like old dancers with the dance steps in their bones.
When they’re home, bathed in lamplight, engaged
in the call and response that is love’s language,
as the house embraces them, as night caresses,
they sometimes wonder why they ever left.

When he’s gone, I sit
staring after him, as
if something in me
wants him to come
walking back to me,
across the bridge,
like that ethereal,
heartbreaking, lovely
scene in Pride and
Prejudice when Mr.
Darcy returns at last
for Elizabeth. This—
this kind of tortured
thinking—is why I
still see a therapist
over him, because
if I were thinking
clearly, I know that
I know that I would
never want him back,
not after what we
shared together, most
of which was heart-
breaking and unlovely.

When He’s Gone
Tomorrow the sun will rise,
Just like every day.
Coffee will perk,
News heads will bobble,
Workers will be on their way.
Urchins will go to school,
The current Congress will rule,
Life for others will go on.
But tomorrow he’ll be gone.
It will be life alone.
It will be life for one.

Never mind Whole Foods,
there’s nothing so comforting
as a stocked root cellar. He
goes down sometimes just
to count the harvest, to see
if it will take him through to
the hungry month. He checks
the rat traps, because food
is food, and they want it too.
Bins of potatoes line the cool
floor, boilers, bakers, mashers.
Cabbages are confounded
upside-down in bushel baskets,
wrapped in layers of scarcer
and scarcer newspaper – soup
in February, coleslaw for now.
The carrots sleep layered
in sand. Squashes huddle,
warmer on the high shelves.
Pumpkins and acorn squash
are sweet now, but go bland,
so he’ll eat those first. When
he’s gone through the pepos,
he’ll hit the buttercups, trying
for all they’re worth to be sweet
potatoes. The smooth, buff
butternuts will last well into
the summer.

When he’s gone, I’ll wonder
why he said that, but not the other,
the space inside my heart can’t endure
another hostage. He’ll pack me
in a suitcase, slip it under his arm, easy
as a sidecar, foot-steps owning
the ground they walk on, stepping
all over the diamonds
in my eyes. When he’s gone,
the madness inside will be
set free. If only he could be
gone without me.

The house is empty
where once we thrived.
And when he was alive
the house held love.
The decline was gradual,
but it seemed to happen
in the blink of an eye.
I try to imagine that place
without our faces in it,
but the task is daunting,
he is haunting my nights.
So many reminders find
there way into my soul
and I start to relive that
life so distant, yet so close
to my heart. But he had
departed, the last bastion
of our home left standing.
Our anchor and beacon,
a man to be admired.
When he was gone we all
suffered from his absence.
He is truly missed.

When he’s gone
and the last flake
takes a final breath
slowly exhales that old man Winter
loosening his death grip
on a frozen mother earth

When he’s gone
all roots tingle and teem
for they’re all happy it seems
at another chance to dance

When he’s gone
and the weather is quite tamed
all the sleeping beauties
waken wiggle wash unashamed
winking wiping their blurry eyes

When he’s gone
all the flaming buds whistle
and all the living things chime in chorus
humming with great green synergy
displaying life’s hidden
gem of potential energy
announcing Spring’s illustrious
dazzling song

The house felt incomplete, the walls
Wept, the breakfast nook was querulous
But she knew he would be home soon
After all, it was only kindergarten
She mused over endless coffees
Trying to remain calm, wondering
At the foreboding that coloured her thoughts

Eventually, she learned to cope, if not well
At least in a way publicly passable
And privately in a way that did not alarm
Her boy – that was the hardest,
Raising him to be the wonder she knew
For which he had the potential while all the time
Living in terror at the thought of his leaving

Maybe it was their being alone that made her
So paranoid, so worried all the time
She refused to take it out and look at it
Too closely – afraid if ever she did, she might
See truths so untenable she would lock him up
And throw away the key, and then what?
She couldn’t bear going anywhere near that …

By the time he was ready for university
She had herself almost under control – truly –
Was finally seeing someone about her issues
Was even contemplating the idea of him going
Away during the week to school as long
As he came home on the weekend
It looked like it was going to work out after all

Oh but then came that fateful Tuesday morning
A week before his classes were to start
When those damned towers came down
And before she knew quite what had happened
Her boy came home dressed in a soldier’s uniform
Deferring school, he said, until he’d done his duty

In shock, she couldn’t tell him not to go
She could barely tell him anything but that she loved
Him so, so much – and then, he was gone
Just like that – on a tour of duty to Iraq
Or Iran or someplace in the middle east
That had to do with the towers coming down

Now, she sits alone in her darkened house
A thick flag folded on her lap, heavy with irony
Remembers that when he’s gone
The house feel incomplete
The walls are weeping again, but in the tangle of thoughts
Seeping like poisonous sludge through her mind
She senses, he won’t be coming home this time
Knows the finality of not caring will take her this time
Knows that when he’s gone …

He dies at 90 and me at 81…
…that’s how it’s got to be.
I cannot live without my man!
He dies at 90 and me at 81…
…and when our time is done,
we’ll die spectacularly.
He dies at 90 and me at 81…
…that’s how it’s got to be.

When he’s gone in a transport of pounding,
my heart leaves the duties of his station
to a substitute entity. He’s found
several who can sustain circulation
for a dozen pulses, or there around—

the entire blood vessel network, for one.
The heart’s in good hands as they coax the blood
and soul en masse onward while he’s undone.
Drums also stand in for my heart, their thud
stoking and choking my fire with low sound.

And sometimes an unpredictable flood
drives my heart to grab a far-flung back up:
an ear of corn, in husk; The Iliad;
the thought of quartz; a chipped, China teacup;
or an overripe fuyu persimmon.

Nearly anything can work as a pump
when my heart takes it and screams “Whassssup?!”